Subject: (Editorial):  "They Know They Are Losing"
Date: Published: 12/13/91 (75 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial):
    `They Know They Are Losing'

    The modern public official has developed a variety of
 reactions to the seemingly unending onslaught of politically
 motivated attacks -- from throwing in the towel to hiring a
 good defense lawyer.  Vice President Dan Quayle may have come
 up with the best response yet:  Thank your critics for
 recognizing an effective opponent when they see one.
    Liberal Congressman Gerry Sikorski (D., Minn.)  says, "Dan
 Quayle has made the transition from irrelevant to dangerous."
 What this means is that the Vice President is getting
 somewhere with his Council on Competitiveness, which is
 famous for its proposals to reform the legal system.  Mr. 
 Quayle and his group, operating within the structure of the
 White House, are now catching a lot of grief from liberals in
 Congress and elsewhere.
    Mr. Quayle responded to these attacks in a speech that he
 gave Tuesday to the Food and Drug Law Institute.  He recalled
 the howling that greeted a proposed restructuring of the Food
 and Drug Administration to speed approval of drugs for AIDS
 and other serious diseases.  "The very day we made our
 announcement, three Democratic committee chairmen tried to
 slow us down," Mr. Quayle said.  "Quoting unnamed, so-called
 `respected experts,' they claim our reforms will `weaken' the
 FDA.... What I really want to know is, when they say
 `respected experts,' who are they talking about?  Consumer
 activist groups?  Trial lawyers?"
    It's clear that Mr. Quayle knew whom he was taking on:
 "Challenging the bureaucratic establishment is not the way
 you become popular in our nation's capital.  You're going to
 irritate all three edges of what I call the iron triangle:
 the bureaucracy, the staff on Capitol Hill and those with a
 vested interest in the status quo."
    Mr. Quayle said that "when you don't do things their way,
 they shift immediately into attack mode."  And they don't
 attack on the merits of legal reform or rationalizing
 wetlands rules or cutting red tape in biotechnology and
 telecommunications.  That'd require some effort at serious
 thought.  Instead, they fire the "ethics" weapon.  The latest
 of many attempts to make policy differences with the White
 House into a crime (a tactic that helps attract press
 coverage) is their smear of Allan Hubbard, the executive
 director of the Competitiveness Council.
    Mr. Hubbard, an Indiana businessman before he came to
 Washington, gets dividends from an auto-wax company, and this
 is supposed to have ominous implications for his role in
 pollution regulation.  And as Rep. John Conyers wrote us after
 our first editorial on this grand crusade, Mr. Hubbard "also
 reported receiving interest income from the bonds of 16
 corporations and from the commercial paper of two
 corporations."  We get the message:  Unless you've worked for
 Common Cause all your life, don't risk government service.
    The Vice President understands well enough what is going
 on here.  "Let's be very clear," Mr. Quayle said.  "The attacks
 on the Competitiveness Council are nothing more than attempts
 by our critics to divert attention from an argument they know
 they are losing."  Americans have caught on that the leviathan
 regulatory state built over the past 50 years now spends much
 of its time and money protecting itself.  The Federal
 Regulatory Class has foisted too many rules onto the private
 sector and strapped local governments with little or no
 thought to costs.
    The "iron triangle," first identified by Ronald Reagan in
 his farewell address in December 1988 on domestic policy, is
 now doing its best to close off the Vice President's
 initiatives.  So far, Mr. Quayle isn't bending.

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